Anti-natal

Thursday 2 April 2009 19.01 EDT
First published on Thursday 2 April 2009 19.01 EDT

My mum was on the phone, complaining that people never used to photograph her on protest marches, but now they do, "because I'm so old. They're saying, 'Look, even old people are against climate change!'" "That's not true," I said, soothingly. "What about the time you dressed up as a peasant to march against the poll tax, to recall the medieval tax-induced hardship that led to the peasants' revolt? You were on the cover of the Wandsworth Borough News." "Ah, that was different," she said. "That was a tableaux."

I want to make a long and involved point about how one's own memories differ from those of one's parents, and what impact this realisation will have on my own parenting style, but in fact, it is just a long-winded explanation for the fact that I didn't notice what T was doing because I was too busy gassing. And when I turned round, he was drinking water from the dog's bowl, but he hadn't picked the bowl up and tipped it into his mouth (this would have been messier, but ultimately more dignified). He was on all fours, drinking it like a dog. This is no good. What if he writes a misery memoir when he's older, and says I made him do it? How will I ever be able to prove it was his idea? It doesn't help that I'm writing a column about it; it will look like post-hoc evidence creation.

It's really easy with dogs: all the dog-trainers say ... well, there's the first thing, dog trainers exist in the first place, and they come to your house. What is the child equivalent to that? A person on a bus raising an eyebrow because you're not doing it right. It's a conundrum of parenting: you want someone to tell you how to do it. Knowledge is a useful thing, like when someone tells you how to drive. But if anybody actually did tell you, that would be really annoying.

Anyway, the dog trainers say, this animal needs to know its place in the pack, and it will understand in these simple ways: the order in which it is fed; the height at which it is allowed to sleep; the order in which it is greeted, etc, etc. I am etc-ing to make it sound as if I have large, untapped resources of expertise underneath all that, but in real life, that's the sum of it.

So I thought: maybe I could start by teaching T where he is in relation to the dog, but before I even get to that, it seems important that he understands first that he isn't a dog. This means not just ceasing to drink like a dog from the dog bowl, but also not sticking his tongue out as the prelude to an affectionate overture, and not panting (my sister once worked for someone whose six-year-old daughter ran in and went "mummymummymummy!" and the women went, "Celeste! A lady doesn't pant like a dog!" We thought this was the end-point of uptight parenting, but now I'm at the coalface of it, I find myself having to point out to T, also, that a man doesn't pant like a dog, either).

They also have this new routine, T and Spot, which I have to say reflects incredibly well on the dog, but not on my parenting. So, say T has a biscuit and he wants to get the attention of the dog ... in the past, he would throw the biscuit to the dog, the dog would eat it, T would cry and I would give him another one. Amazingly, the dog is still exactly the same shape. I figured in the end that this was just spoiling ... someone. Maybe no one would end up fat, but someone would end up spoiled. Also, my nieces weren't used to life with a dog, so they would feed him everything. One time, the dog got so full that on the way home he was burping pesto. There's also a waste issue; it's disrespectful, innit. To the 13th-century peasantry. No, hang on, to the starving children.

So I introduced the "one-way street, mate" rule. The long version is: "You have given your biscuit to the dog, and that, mate, is a one-way street." T moaned about this a bit, but acquiesced, and then they devised this system - you'll think I'm lying, but I'm not - where T holds out the biscuit, the dog breaks off half of it, then walks off. Unbelievable cross-species co-operation! I want to give the dog a medal. I wonder if he's going to give T Weil's disease.